In the past, it has been known to feed product into open top pouches carried about a rotatable pouch filler wheel. Spouts carried on a spout plate extend down into open pouches and product flows through the spouts into aligned pouches. In one form of filler, the spout plate defines a plurality of funnels having bottom outlets opening into the depending spouts. Product on the spout plate is swept into these funnel-like openings when the funnels are rotated over aligned pouches on an underlying filler wheel. One form of such apparatus is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,478,492.
In other forms of pouch filling, the spout plates are tilted with respect to the filler wheel to extend spouts into open-top pouches aligned therebeneath through a portion of the rotation of the spout filler wheel and underlying pouch filler wheel. Such apparatus is shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,563,001; 3,821,873; 4,232,504; 4,344,269; 4,702,289 and 4,848,421.
It is now desirable, however, to provide pouch filling at varying speeds, and to higher accuracy. Such accuracy is hampered in these prior disclosures by the nature in which the funnels or other devices are filled and emptied. For example, while a plow has been used to sweep the upper surface in which the funnel tops are formed, turbulence and flow characteristics of products, as surface speeds increase, are a problem. These factors occur under the metering block and change the weights metered at different speeds.
Accordingly, it has been one objective of this invention to provide improved apparatus and methods for filling containers with product.
A further objective of this invention has been to provide improved volumetric measuring and pouch filling apparatus.
To these ends, a preferred embodiment of the invention includes a volumetric feeder wheel, an underlying spout wheel, and an underlying pouch filler wheel. The volumetric feeder wheel has a plurality of volumetric product measuring cavities having outlets disposed in a peripheral edge of the wheel. A belt is entrained about the wheel covering the outlets except in a sector where the belt is held away from the wheel by a pulley. This uncovers the outlets for discharge of the measured product in the cavities radially outwardly and downwardly into passages of the spout wheel, and at an angular sector where the spouts thereunder are aligned with open-top pouches on the filler wheel.
Once the belt re-engages the feeder wheel, and closes the cavity outlets, product is dispersed onto the feeder wheels' surface and is directed over the cavities to fill them, even when the outlets are not aligned with underlying pouches. This permits the use of a large sector of rotation for progressively and gently metering product on the feeder wheel surface into the cavities. Product turbulence on the upper surface of the feeder wheel is reduced and repeatably accurate pouch filling is provided even for very low volume pouch fills.